Administration & Society

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What Can Rorty Teach an Old Pragmatist Doing Public

Administration or Planning?
Charles Hoch
Administration & Society 2006; 38; 389
DOI: 10.1177/0095399706287885
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://aas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/38/3/389

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Disputatio Sine Fine

WHAT CAN RORTY TEACH AN

OLD PRAGMATIST DOING PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION OR PLANNING?
CHARLES HOCH
University of Illinois at Chicago

Hugh Millers argument that philosopher Richard Rorty offers a pragmatic upgrade for
public administration does not work. However, the critics, in defending old pragmatism
against new, miss some useful insights. Rorty basically helps us to grasp the hubris of
claiming epistemic trump and to beware the quest for certainty in the service of the powerful. For instance, how would pragmatic ideas compare with more conventional theoretical expectations rationalizing the recent combination of federal intelligence agencies into
a new Homeland Security Agency? Rorty describes and celebrates the critical irony of selfperfection as a resource best nurtured in private while insisting that public expectations
be shaped by practical alternatives sensitive to compromise and consensus. We theorists
should not be distracted by philosophical debate but focus instead on inventing and comparing practical organizational alternatives that meet public needs without sacrificing
individual freedom.

Keywords:

pragmatism; planning; irony; practical reason

EDITORS NOTE: The following is a reaction to Hugh Millers comments on Patricia

Shieldss article from November 2003, which set off the long debate over pragmatism and
public administration that continued over many issues. Though he comes late to the fray,
we feel Charles Hochs response is a worthy addition.
ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 38 No. 3, July 2006 389-398
DOI: 10.1177/0095399706287885
2006 Sage Publications

389
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ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / July 2006

I encountered the debate about old and new pragmatism in this journal
taking an electronic sabbatical journey across disciplinary boundaries.
In most of my travels I have dutifully played my role as a visiting tourist
and student, absorbing the ambiance of debates while struggling to grasp
unfamiliar vocabulary. But as a student of pragmatic ideas in urban planning (a not-too-distant disciplinary relation), I found I wanted to offer
some commentary (Hoch, 1984a, 1984b, 1990, 1994, 2002). I open with
some interpretive remarks from an outsider who shares an interest and
enthusiasm about the value of pragmatic thinking for disciplines such as
public administration.
I take Millers (2004) argument as my point of departure. Miller
makes three claims: Public administrators currently subscribe to the
tenets of an old pragmatism; philosopher Richard Rortys pragmatism
offers an attractive replacement; and this new pragmatism will improve
public administration. The first and last claims require empirical support
and Miller provides none. Miller and readers such as me know that practitioners adopt rationales and judge effectiveness all the time. But what
systematic evidence that compares the impact of different styles of practice and evaluation do we possess? Snider (2000) has researched the first
claim and finds little evidence that the public administration field adopted the old pragmatism. Shields (2003) agrees as well, trying hard to persuade her colleagues to give classical pragmatism a try.
I recast Shieldss work, illustrating some insights I think Rorty has to
offer. I then argue that Rorty can help answer some questions that old pragmatists did not. Rorty has little to say that public administrators or planners
can put to practical use, but I think he does help us understand why we
should replace metaphysical belief with social hope. This is enough for me.
I believe those of us interested in pragmatism need to put our ideas to use
analyzing and reforming professional practice, expanding our community
of inquiry to share what we learn across disciplinary divides.
CLASSIC PRAGMATISM AND NEW
Patricia Shields reminds us of the tale of blind men standing around an
elephant, describing what they feel and, from each standpoint, proclaiming
what the entire elephant must be.1 According to Shields (2003), John
Dewey would have the blind men round the elephant discuss their observations with one another and empirically test their respective beliefs,
whereas Rorty would have the blind men participate in a kind of linguistic
focus group. Shields, I think, misinterprets Rorty through Millers account.
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391

Rorty does not believe that the experience of each blind man has anything
to do with the truthfulness (i.e., accuracy) of their judgments. As Shields
notes, experiences stimulate inquiry and communication. She imagines the
blind men sharing a method of inquiry that enables them to act on the world
more objectively. Rorty does not reject the merits of scientific method but
the philosophical claim that science can get things right. He insists that
human belief already ties us to the world. The language users that we are
makes it impossible for us to miss the truth of things.
For, a believer who is (unlike a child or psychotic) a fully fledged member
of her community will always be able to produce justification for most of
her beliefsjustification which meets the demands of that community.
There is, however, no reason to think that the beliefs she is best able to
justify are those which are most likely to be true, nor that those she is least
able to justify are those which are most likely to be false. The fact that
most beliefs are justified is, like the fact that most beliefs are true, merely on more consequence of the holistic character of belief-ascription.
We cannot, no matter how hard we try, continue to hold a belief which we
have tried, and conspicuously failed, to weave together with our other
beliefs into a justificatory web. (Rorty, 1999, p. 37)

John Dewey, William James, and Charles Peirce teach us that the pursuit of an external truth is a power trip defended by those interested in
sustaining their beliefs as eternal and absolute. The pragmatists shift
inquiry away from questions about truth to focus instead on the justification of beliefs tied to joint inquiry. Rorty (1999) puts it this way:
So the relation between our truth claims and the rest of the world is causal
rather than representational. It causes us to hold beliefs, and we continue
to hold the beliefs which prove to be reliable guides to getting what we
want. (p. 33)

This shift displaces knowledge as a window to realitya rational method

that will set things right. Rorty argues that pragmatists such as Dewey
believed that scientific method provided the best process we have developed so far for justifying our beliefs about the world. Shields agrees and
has her blind men using scientific method to discover the truth about the
elephant. Rorty emphasizes the contingency and use of the method.
Scientific agreement relies on deliberations that include comparisons
among competing beliefs. The rules or conventions of a method cannot
anticipate the outcome or ensure shared meanings among the participants. What matters in science are the liberal social virtues that encourage participants to conduct critical and tolerant inquiry.
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Pragmatists believe that we make knowledge rather than discover it.

Shields describes how this works using the example of detectives at a
crime scene. The detectives deliberate about the evidence by forming
alternate hypotheses about the order and meaning of actions leading up
to the crime, drawing on their joint experience with prior cases. They use
their hypothetical judgments to guide the conduct of the investigation
within established legal and normative conventions. Shields argues that
the detectives can make progress in solving the crime because they combine experience and method in a familiar context. She believes that
Millers Rorty would undermine the practical solidarity of such inquiry
by introducing arbitrary and irrelevant linguistic critique.2
Sticking with the detective genre, contrast the practice of Conan
Doyles Sherlock Holmes against Agatha Christies Miss Marple. Holmes
is the classical detective and Marple the new. Holmes takes pride in
deploying methodical deduction (judgments that are often closer to what
Charles Peirce termed abduction) as an independent professional expert.
His character avoids robust interaction in the investigative community,
dipping into the ongoing inquiry only on an as-needed basis. Miss Marple
takes the role of a humble amateur whose inquiry includes a detailed
assessment of the relationships tied to a specific context. She listens and
observes without methodical filters, attending to the complex layers of
attachment and meaning that bind people together within the community
disrupted by the murder. Both characters deploy a critical irony that
enables them to combine motivation, causality, and evidence in ways that
conventional police work does not. However, Conans Holmes leverages
skeptical detachment with the help of a rational method, whereas
Christies Marple achieves detachment through acts of social imagination
that take shape in dialog with others. Should we conclude that Holmes is
the better detective than Marple because he is more methodical and professional? Or do we argue instead that it depends on how well they solve
cases? Or does it depend on the readers taste for a certain type of detective fiction narrative?
Consider recent efforts by the federal government to meet national
security threats by creating a homeland security agency. The methodical
view argues that we can improve the quality of security by creating administrative interdependence among agencies that previously functioned independent of one another. Our institutional design efforts need focus on
the kinds of arrangements that will standardize procedures to enhance
accountability and communication across distinct agencies and so
improve coordination among them. How much confidence does this huge
consolidation inspire among the public administration intelligentsia? Do
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we believe that standardizing criteria in different administrative domains

will yield a more effective response to threats?
A pragmatic view turns our attention away from methodological fix
to focus instead on the meaning of security for citizens themselves.
Considering the different risks among groups, institutions, and communities of citizens generates a wider range of purposes than does protecting
the nation from acts of terror by political enemies. The pragmatist
embraces a kind of liberal political framework that seeks ways to distribute the advantages of democratic collaboration more widely. This includes
the distribution of risk and uncertainty. When we socialize risk, in effect
find ways to make interdependencies a source of confidence rather than
uncertainty, we create the kind of democratic community both old and
new pragmatists can support. In addition, participation draws on the
knowledge and experience of a wider array of the population, improving
the quality of social intelligence. How we create and manage these agencies shapes the quality of this trust and the competence of the agency. That
this description appears hopelessly idealistic underscores how far administrators must travel to achieve the sort of institutional design that pragmatism inspires.

WHY NOT USE RORTY?

When we think pragmatically, we do not imagine ideas reflecting reality or making reality but doing both. Human animals share an evolutionary legacy that inescapably ties us to our world even as we imagine and
plan ways to inhabit other ones. The languages we use, the tools we
make, the institutions we create, and the settlements we build have sustained our biological and cultural reproduction for tens of thousands of
years. This evolutionary conception of human activity displaced philosophical distinctions between ideal and real, fact and value, spirit and
matter by making them obsolete. Pragmatists no longer believe in discovering the world as it truly is but offer beliefs to help improve how we
respond to the troublesome situations in the world we inhabit.
The old pragmatists stepped around philosophical dualisms such as
the fact value dichotomy in different ways. Louis Menand (2001) offers
an incisive summary of differences among old pragmatists Charles
Peirce, William James, and John Dewey in words a layman can comprehend and enjoy. Despite differences, all believe that the adaptive qualities
of human action provide the proper subject for reflection and systematic
inquiry. Menand poses two questions that the old pragmatism does not
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answer but that the new pragmatism might. First, we form beliefs to get
what we want, but where do the wants come from? How does pragmatism account for our purposes? Second, how do we account for the social
fact that our wants and beliefs may lead us to act nonpragmatically, either
heroically or stupidly as the case may be? How can a pragmatist explain
why we humans choose to die for a belief? I think Rorty answers each of
the questions Menand poses, and his answers provide, I think, more useful targets for debate than the abstract and exclusively philosophical critique of epistemology.

RORTY ON IRONY, SELF-PERFECTION,

AND SOLIDARITY
Rorty uses both Dewey and Nietzsche to argue that we cannot escape
the contingency of socialization with appeals to theory, especially when
we expect theory to justify the expansion and direction of professional
or administrative authority. In this sense, Rorty (1989), like Foucault
(1980), critiques theoretical arguments about a common human nature
underwriting moral action. Rorty urges theorists seeking self-perfection
to turn their attention to the private sphere, seeking enchantment,
synthesis, and edification there. (Private in this sense does not include
only solitary reflection but the associations that help improve our selfdevelopment, such as the community of scholars who read this journal.)
Rorty does not treat privacy as a kind of possessive isolation but engaged
self-inquiry with others who share similar aspirations. In the private
sphere we can construct theoretical utopias that link self-perfection with
visions of egalitarian solidarity. We put flesh on the bones of desire,
using our freedom to imagine and construct purposes and identities that
transgress conventional limits and explore new forms of self-expression.
But when we go public, we need to invent practical institutions that
vigilantly protect the boundaries of private freedom as they remedy the
unjust distribution of human suffering and cruelty created by current
institutions and individuals. We engineer democratic compromises that
balance competing purposes and interests in public. We develop our
desires through practices of self-perfection in private. We should stop
looking for a successor to Marxism, for a theory which fuses decency
and sublimity (Rorty, 1989, p. 120).
As intellectuals, we should seek heroic glory and edification in the
kind of private conversations we hold in journals such as this but beware
promoting one or another vision as the correct guide for professional
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practice. Our desires can fuel the invention of organizational innovations

or plans that offer prototypes for future improvements in situations of
insecurity and complexity. We draw on our imaginations to fit details to
setting and persuade others to make changes just so. But as we witness
early results, we find social consequences that change our initial desire.
Rorty, in his written work, moves back and forth between imaginative
irony and prudent solidarity, modeling how a pragmatic philosopher can
foster conversations in both domains.

IMPROVING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:

RORTY ON CRUELTY AND SOLIDARITY
In The Public and Its Problems, Dewey (1927) captured the interdependent and interactive character of modern individuals. He grasped that
no technique can substitute for deliberations among interdependent participants tied to the layered institutions and communities we inhabit. We
need to communicate with one another intelligently about these interdependencies and figure out what we can do to avoid the unexpected effects
of a too-detached specialization that threatens our freedom.
Rorty takes this pragmatic outlook public as he describes how the compassion we feel for others comes through socialization in prosperous
liberal societies. We make a mistake when we try to tie this specific historical effect to a common human nature. As we recognize the contingency of liberal political beliefs about shared vulnerability, we face the
political challenge of persuading others to believe so as well. We cannot
trust that people will discover such respect. They need to learn it. Keenly
aware of the contingency of human belief and the precarious status of our
liberal institutions, Rorty insists that we keep our pursuit of private desires
and public expectations separatepublicly focus on developing practical
alternatives for resolving differences through compromise and consensus;
privately imagine possibilities for self-development that generate and celebrate new differences.
Rorty (1989) uses George Orwells 1984 to illustrate both the contingency of human belief and the nasty consequences that can accompany
self-perfection in public. Orwell imagines a brilliant intellectual, OBrien,
whose service to the collective oligarchy includes torturing brilliant rebels
until each willingly embraces humiliating self-subjection. When OBrien
breaks the rebellious Winston, he does not enforce subordination but does
something much worse. The only object of OBriens intensive sevenyear-long study of Winston was to make possible the rich, complicated,
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delicate, absorbing spectacle of mental pain which Winston would eventually provide (p. 179). Rorty uses Orwells OBrien to make the point
that belief in human nature or theories of truth cannot save us from a contingent future that leaves no room for freedom. Rorty (1998) understands
the risk of clever forms of subjection and would have us struggle politically against such indoctrination and subordination. Orwells tale awakens
in us liberal social hopes worth dying for. In public administration and
planning, we theorists raise doubts about the schemes undertaken by practitioners to remedy social problems and serve the public good. Rorty does
not tell us how to improve our inquiry but reminds us what we might lose
if we sacrifice freedom for a more encompassing rational order that
promises to deliver us from uncertainty and ambiguity.

CONCLUSION
Rorty writes to provoke a reconsideration of how we take for granted
beliefs about truth and knowledge. He tells us not to read him as a systematic philosopher, someone like Dewey, but as a kind of cultural critic
offering descriptions of familiar relationships that challenge conventional philosophical belief about truth and representation. Rorty does not
expect to win arguments about the nature of reality but to change the conversation in both a more poetic and a practical direction. Instead of seeking foundations for scientific judgment tied to the quest for certainty, we
need to learn to appreciate the variety of cultural work people create and
how to improve the quality of practical judgments that reduce human suffering. Rorty, like Dewey, recognizes that the validity about poetry or policy does not flow from the command of more inclusive propositions
about human nature or matter but the consequences they evoke. We need
to pay attention to consequencesthe quality of the edification that poetry delivers or the quality that family planning policy offers a particular
clientele. In such cases we cannot escape the contingency of human judgment in specific cultural contexts.3
What does this mean for disciplinary theorists interested in pragmatism?
We should focus less on the questions about the creation of ideals and more
on fostering administrative schemes or urban plans that reduce human suffering while offering new domains for private self-perfection. The focus
shifts from epistemological arguments about the rational quality of competing arguments to practical arguments that offer alternative ways to
improve solidarity and encourage individual experimentation (Hoch,
1984a, 1984b). I think the essay by Jim Garrison (2000) comes closest to
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describing what this means for rejuvenating public administration with a

pragmatic orientation.
Many of us studying urban planning who have taken inspiration from
the pragmatic ethos have turned our attention to do empirical work that
explores what planners do (Hoch, 1994). The debates that lead many of us
to pragmatism had to do with power, politics, and the public interest. How
can professional planners anticipate and build democratic intelligence in
routine deliberations and even foster compassion in the face of tragic
suffering (Forester, 1989, 1999)? What sort of institutional changes enhance
the quality of democratic participation as they improve the efficacy of
plans (Marris, 1982, 1996)? How do we serve a public interest without
distorting the plurality of interests that accompany urban issues (Susskind
& Field, 1996)? How do we meet the demands of efficiency even as we
reframe these to include new technologies, new modes of participation,
and increasing sensitivity to demands for environmental sustainability
(Throgmorton, 1996)? In instances such as this, analysts look to the consequences of professional practices and public policies and try to improve
on current conventionsusually focusing on very specific cases using
detailed narratives and arguments. In these accounts it sometimes helps to
discuss what theory means for practice, but mostly professionals respond
to the results in practical and political fashion. Theory works more like a
flashlight than the sun.

NOTES
1. I offer a different response to the blind men and the elephant (Hoch, 2002).
2. Rorty emphasizes language not for therapeutic or disciplinary reasons but to show
how our linguistic practice already ties our beliefs to the world in ways that work. He does
not reject the efficacy of human experience as a practical resource for judgment but the
concept of experience as a special conduit or bridge linking the self to reality. Rorty sees
us as cultural animals whose language makes our experience human in just the sort of ways
that the detectives consider as they form hypotheses about the motivation of a murder.
3. Recognizing contingency does not mean accepting or yielding to arbitrary or unfair
circumstances. We may not know beyond a shadow of a doubt what the future holds, but this
does not mean we cannot know what it means to successfully resist or reform destructive
conditions.

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Charles Hoch teaches urban planning at the University of Illinois. He coedited the
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